Alt-Power AU: Damp Detours (part 1)

(A Subnautica Crossover)

Author's Note: I've had this written for months, but I wasn't sure whether I wanted to scrap it or not. I'll explain why at the end of the chapter. Anyway: I would recommend pulling up Subnautica's full soundtrack on Youtube and listening as you read this. That's how I wrote it. Also, major spoilers for Subnautica ahead, so if you have any intention of playing it but haven't yet maybe give this one a miss. I don't want to cheapen that experience. It was powerful enough that I wrote this. Hell, Subnautica itself was good enough that I played it through despite having thalassophobia. Or maybe the thalassophobia made it more effectively terrifying…

I think it's safe to say I'm pretty much fucked.

That's my considered opinion. Fucked, and a plagiarist to boot. Not that it matters now.

I don't know where I am. I don't know how I got here. I don't know how to get back.

I do know that the sky isn't supposed to have two moons, one a massive, terrifying red rock filling a third of the sky. And I know that there's no land in sight.

I'm not dead, though. Even though I really should be, stranded in the middle of the ocean. I'm actually safe. For the moment. Writing this in a notebook… Getting a waterproof backpack was a stroke of genius. Saved my life.

Nobody is going to find this notebook, but I don't have anything better to do while I wait for something approximating a sun. I can see well enough to write, but I need more light to figure out what I'm going to do next. In the meantime…

My name is Taylor Hebert, and I really should be dead right now.

If someone by some miracle does find this notebook, but not me, then my will is as follows. I want all of my notebooks (check my closet at home) photocopied. Every single one. Then I want copies given to the police, every child advocacy group in Brockton Bay, every group not in Brockton Bay, every newspaper and news channel in the country, and then read aloud a copy to Ms. Blackwell so she can wallow in the guilt she rightly deserves. If she's capable of guilt at all. Fuck everyone remotely connected to the misery I've gone through. I should have been more aggressive about all of that, fuck the consequences, even if it got me nowhere. Hindsight, I guess.

Okay, that out of the way… Sorry, dad. I didn't want it to end this way. Whatever this way is.

I genuinely don't know how I got here. One minute I was in the bathroom, trying to get glue out of my hair. I was really, really angry. The next, I can feel something pulling at my insides. Then I'm falling, and then I'm in the ocean.

Fucking scary. I don't usually curse, but fuck. I'm out of non-profane terms to use to adequately describe the pure terror I felt. Am still feeling, even as I write this, balancing my notebook on my knees as I try to ignore the waves splashing against the metal shell I'm sitting on. I'm even writing all flowery and normal just to stretch out how long I can write before I cover everything and have to start thinking about the absolute mountain of shit I'm currently in.

What metal shell, you might ask? Good question. I didn't see it at first. First, I was underwater, and I didn't know which way was up, and I couldn't see. I got to the surface mostly because my backpack is waterproof, mostly empty, sealed, and buoyant as a result. It pulled up toward the surface and I followed. I doggy paddled for a few minutes before I saw it. This thing I'm sitting on now.

It's a metal cylinder, half above the water, about the size of a dining room table on top. I think there's a window set into the long side… I'm not sure, there's no light inside if that is a window. It's not floating, it's not moving at all, so it's attached to something, but I don't know how to get in and it's too dark to figure out.

Yeah. Something teleported me from a school bathroom to an alien planet – that second moon is so big and red I would say it was Mars but I know that can't be right – and I ended up in the middle of an ocean. I don't see any lights aside from the stars and a few glowing patches of water really far off.

Obviously I'm sitting on a sign of life. Intelligent life, even. I tried banging on the metal… For a little while.

Until I thought about what else down there might hear me. Sharks. Alien sharks. Aliens. I'm barely above the water, any sea creature that notices me could probably flop right up to me and bite me in half. And this ocean is big.

I'm too scared to draw any attention to myself. This metal pod has to be connected to something. When I can see I'll try and force my way inside. That red moon is moving weirdly quickly, which I think makes sense since it looks so big I think it's close to the planet, and that means it's orbiting more quickly? I think?

If there are intelligent aliens inside this metal pod I'll apologize for trespassing once I'm already safely inside. I'll take my chances with them over the alien sharks I really hope don't actually exist. But shouldn't they already know I'm here?

The ones who built this pod, I mean. Not the hypothetical sharks.

I never really thought about the ocean before today. It's just… there. Back home. A thing. We didn't go to the beach very often, it was kind of crappy. I barely know how to swim.

School this morning seems like a lifetime ago.

I'm fucking terrified. Writing only makes it a little better. I want to go home. But I can't. I can't see any way back. So I have to do something.

I'm going to try and find a hatch on the side of this thing. As soon as I can make myself feel around beneath the water. If I don't write any more, assume I got pulled in by something.

As if anyone will ever read this.

Still alive. Still here.

The alien who built this thing was a prick of the highest order. Inconsiderate, fearless prick. If I had him in front of me right now I'd beat him senseless.

I was scared of what might theoretically be lurking below me.

I am no longer scared of what might theoretically be lurking below me. Instead, I am now scared of what I know is lurking all around me. Because I can see it out the many, many windows this alien built into his little base under the waves. I can hear it all around me. I can smell it. I can feel it looking at me whenever I turn my back on a window. And it is exactly as terrifying as I thought it would be.

I'm currently sitting on the floor in one of the only rooms down here that doesn't have any view of the water. It's got what I think is a bioreactor, and a bunch of white lockers… Everything in here is white and high-tech. Really nice, if it were somewhere less terrifying. This room doesn't have any windows, so it's my new bedroom.

There's no bed in here. There is a bed in this base. A really normal one, all things considered. In a really nice, spacious bedroom. There was even a model spaceship and a few posters!

But that fucker put a full-wall window in the same room as the bed, and this room I'm in now is only accessible by a ladder. So that's not happening.

Okay. Calm down, Taylor. This could be so much worse. Take stock. What do you have that you didn't before?

A place to stand and walk around.

Scarily thin but presumably tough metal walls between me and the alien planet. Except for the sub room with a fucking hole in the floor. A moonpool, I think it's called?

A submarine, apparently. A dinky little thing that looks like a plastic toy made by a toy company that thought putting a Volkswagon Beetle underwater was a good idea. I have no idea how to use it, whether it's working, whether it has power, or anything about it. But it's there and it doesn't look damaged.

Power. I fiddled with the bioreactor – it has stick figure labels drawn on the side so I knew right away what it did – and stuffed some rotten stuff in it. The real, non-emergency lights all came on. So I have power for now.

Presumably air. I heard air vents somewhere when the power came on, and the smell is mostly gone.

Technology that's weirdly accessible. Not a password prompt in sight. I need to investigate that further, but it's convenient as hell so I don't want to ask too many questions yet.

Tools. These lockers are everywhere, and there's all sorts of crap in them, but also some useful things. Best thing so far? A knife.

Water. In a plastic water bottle. I don't recognize the brand, but still. Abnormally normal.

So yeah. I'm infinitely better off than I was before. Just… a lot more scared.

The landscape down beneath the waves is as vibrant and alien as the sky was. This base is built kind of like a hamster cage, with pods and tubes connecting them. I can see, looking out some of the windows, that it's anchored into an underwater cliff face of sorts. Weird coral, mostly normal-looking rock… Weird little fish are everywhere.

That's what I see when I look back at the cliff. Off to the right, from that orientation, there's a big forest of seaweed. Can't see very far into it, but there are… glowing berries. I think.

More importantly, in that I almost peed myself when I saw them out the windows pointing that way, there are alligator-alien-shark-things swimming around over there. They're longer than I am tall, they have weird snouts like alligators, flippers, and teeth so jagged they're probably the worst nightmares of dentists who are afraid of monsters.

And me. Can't forget me. I haven't slept yet on this planet, and when I do I fully expect to wake up screaming.

But that's not even the worst of it. At least I can't see much in the forest. Out behind me from where I stand looking at the cliff face, well… There's the red plains.

Red seaweed mostly carpets the stone floor that slopes out into the distance. Pillars and arches of stone jut up from the otherwise smooth ground, the tallest ones three stories tall or maybe taller. Little fish swim around over there. There are some floating rocks with weird pink jellyfish things stuck all over them.

Bigger fish are there, too. Dozens of blue beetle-sharks infest the red sands. They're also larger than me. They're flat and have hard shells and wiggle around as they chase their prey with really flat, toothy maws.

They're terrifying, obviously, everything is terrifying in this place. I don't even know if it's rational to be so afraid, but I can't help it. The ocean just… keeps going in that direction. The water isn't perfectly clear, and out past a certain distance it just gets too blurry to see anything, but I get the feeling that the ground slopes further downward that way.

That is what this probably-not-an-alien asshole had his bed facing. That view. That immense emptiness big enough for a fucking pod of whales to swim through without bumping each other, pointing out into the unknown.

There are caves in the base of the cliffside. Why the hell didn't he build a bunker in one of those! What if something big swims right up to here? I heard a loud noise in the distance earlier, like a whale but not.

I'm trying not to think about it. I have no idea how tough this base is, for all I know it's nigh-invincible Tinker bullshittery, but it feels like I'm sitting in a big tin can.

Other things… Other interesting things.

There are a few different rooms here. There's one with a sort of projector in the floor in one room… It had a hologram showing what I think was an error code when I saw it last. There are some machines on the walls, and there's a big planter bed with a bunch of dirt in it. There's a little aquarium, and by little I mean big enough that there's a hatch for me to get in and swim around in it if I wanted, but it's empty aside from water. The guy's room is empty, too.

That's something else. It doesn't seem like he's been here in a while. He certainly hasn't come back since I've been here. The aquariums are all empty, and I found some rotten crap in one of the lockers that I think used to be some sort of fruit or vegetable. It went into powering up the bioreactor.

Who was this guy? I'm pretty sure he was a guy, his room had… that sort of smell. Old, but still.

Oh. There's something this place doesn't have. Anything resembling a shower or toilet. That's going to be a problem. Though there is the moonpool… I don't think I can bring myself to squat over the corner of that. Not knowing there are literally alien sharks in the water within swimming distance of it.

He must have had some solution to the bathroom problem. He was definitely here for a while. For that matter, I don't think he's been gone for that long. Maybe he'll come back soon and ask me how the hell I got here and why I tore the sheets off his bed to cover some of the smaller windows.

I think I have a problem. I'm stranded in the middle of an alien ocean and I'm discovering that I have a fear of alien oceans. A phobia.

But is it a phobia if it is completely and totally justified? I don't think it's considered a phobia to be afraid of getting eaten by alien sharks if you're surrounded by hungry alien sharks and you need to use the bathroom but you know for a fact that they're lurking in the closest thing to a toilet.

Oh god, if I get out of this alive I'm never going to take a toilet for granted again. Maybe this technological genius has a bedpan? Maybe I can make one and dump it into the moonpool after?

I think I'm going to have to.

I'm back. It's been… A day, I think? I feel like the days and nights go by a lot faster here.

I still haven't found a toilet or shower, but the bedpan idea worked out. One plant pot has been repurposed.

I don't… think the various kinds of alien shark were attracted to the stuff I dumped into the moonpool after? You had better believe I stuck around and watched to find out. It's a big open hole in this base that I can't figure out how to close, if there even is a way to close it. I assume the sharks can't breathe air, so they probably can't go anywhere even if they do jump out of the pool, but still. None of them swam anywhere near the opening, so I guess they're not interested.

Anyway. Finding a substitute for the toilet is no longer my biggest problem.

Clean water isn't either, apparently. I figured out what another of the weird machines in this place does. It just… makes water bottles. Filled water bottles. With light. Like Star Trek.

That convinced me to start trying to figure out all the other machines. For all I know one of them is a 'teleport to your home planet' device and it's just sitting there waiting for me to find the instruction manual. And the thing is, I don't know how long the bioreactor is going to go before I run out of congealed crud I can scrape out of the lockers. I think I could just get some seaweed from outside, but… That would mean going outside. So if there's a fast way out of here I want to find it now.

But I'm writing in my notebook right now instead of searching, so you can probably guess that I haven't found it yet and am kind of stuck. I can use a computer back home. Here? There aren't really buttons, and I think some of the computers aren't working properly. That room with the hologram is still showing an error message, and I can't even figure out whether it's in English or not.

It should be, though. Those posters in the asshole's room of terror are in English. There's one of a cat in a space helmet that says 'Keep Calm.' I took it down and stuck it up against a window, but then I took it back down again because it felt like something was watching me from behind the cat's eyes. Now it's a rolled up plastic tube that I'll chuck in the bioreactor if I'm out of better options. Maybe it's biological enough to count as fuel…

Hmm… If I'm ever that desperate to fuel the bioreactor, I guess I should find out whether my own waste works. But not before then.

Anyway… I think I figured out how to make one of the big wall-mounted computers reboot. There was a button, a tiny little thing set into the bottom of the machine like you get with phones and that 'stick a needle in to reset' hole, but big enough my finger fit. I'm waiting to see if it lets me do anything once it finishes powering back up.

Food is going to be my main problem if I don't get out of here soon. There were plants here once, and the asshole had to eat something, but they all died or were removed a while back, hence the crud in the lockers and nothing being planted in the plant bed. The plant bed is in here with me, which means those plants were normal plants that probably don't grow underwater. Which makes me wonder whether there's land somewhere nearby, or whether he brought seeds from another planet.

There's a lot of spaceship stuff in his room. A model of a really big-looking spaceship in small scale. I think he came here from another planet. Or he's a Tinker who teleported here by accident like I did. I could imagine Armsmaster building stuff like this base if he got stranded on an ocean planet.

I think I'm going to go back to digging through the lockers while the computer restarts. My stomach is growling and I can't sit still to write any more. I remember hearing that humans can go without food for a while if they have fresh water…

I hope I'm not here long enough to find out firsthand.

In my defense, my glasses were in my backpack and it was dark and I was scared.

That's my excuse for why I didn't see the city-sized spaceship wreck laying in the ocean like a toy in a mostly-drained bathtub my first night here. It's right there. Probably an hour's swim if I was a good swimmer. I went back up into that top metal pod this morning to see the sun and not think about my nightmares – woke up screaming, at least it was predictable, this isn't a nightmare journal and I don't want to remember so I'm not writing anymore.

I thought the wreck was recent for a few minutes. But it's definitely not. It's old and looks decrepit and there aren't any obvious fires. It might be the same spaceship the asshole has a model of down in his room. They're similar shapes, but this one is so broken and huge that it's hard to say.

It's too bad I don't have a camera. If someone finds this notebook, they're going to think I'm scared by my own shadow. It's impossible to put into words just how fucking massive and terrifying and alien and desolate and creepy and lively this place is. I tried, I'm going to keep trying, but I can't really explain it. You have to be here. Maybe you have to be here with no idea how you got here or whether you'll ever get home. It's a special kind of loneliness.

I'm sitting on top of that first metal pod I found my first night here. Right now. I had to get into the water for two seconds to get up here, and my clothes are soaked again, but I haven't found a dryer or anything so they were all stiff and scratchy anyway. I'm going to hang them up when I go back down. If the asshole comes back and finds me walking around his abandoned base naked… Well, fuck him and the spaceship he rode in on. Not literally.

I don't want to think about what I might be willing to do to go home. If that was seriously the tradeoff, well… I'd definitely think about it.

But it's not and I'm not doing that and he's probably dead because nobody leaves their base with rotting produce everywhere so it doesn't matter! He definitely left, I haven't found a body so he didn't die in his base, but he either left with no intention of coming back or he left thinking he'd be back soon… but wasn't.

Having seen what passes for wildlife under the waves, I think it was probably the latter.

I'm sitting on a metal pod, looking out at a wrecked spaceship. I'm writing in a notebook. I'm avoiding going back down. One thing I've noticed is that none of the sharks I can see out the windows down there ever go close to the surface. I don't know what else is out there, but I do know what's directly under me and I know that I could probably dip my toes in the water now without losing them.

…

Shit. I should have just come up here to use the bathroom.

Well, actually, maybe not. This pod is connected to the main base by one of those cylinders I told you about, but it's like an eye on the stalk of one of those creepy deep-sea fish back on earth. I had to climb down like a hundred ladder rungs to get down to the base proper, and I had to come up all that way to feel the sun on my skin today. That's not a commute I can make every time I have to use the bathr-

A small, damp figure sits atop a dull piece of metal sticking out of the ocean. Her black hair is knotted and hangs limply about her shoulders, and her sweatshirt is crusty. She sits in the middle of the table-sized top of the metal cylinder, a black notebook balanced on her knees. She is still, only her hand moving as she scratches out her thoughts with a pencil under the glare of an alien sun. The pages and her hair sway in the breeze.

A light weight settles on her head. She stiffens, even the small movements of her hand and face stilling. Her breathing comes faster, in short, quick inhales and exhales.

She hears a small cry, bright and inquisitive, and the weight on her head disappears as a bird-sized shape leaps out in front of her, gliding along on the breeze with large, pearly wings. Its wings form a rounded triangle, and it has a smooth, tubular black and white torso with two stubby little claws near the middle and a beak-like face at the front. No feathers, a smooth body all the way around, but the top of its flap-like wings have mottling that looks a bit like feathers.

It circles her a few times before flying away, up into the sky.

At least the alien birds are nice.

I'm hungry. I'm also really, really annoyed. Turns out not-an-alien asshole was a rock collector. He's got a bunch of hunks of stone and metal sitting in some of his lockers. Nothing valuable, as far as I can tell. Lots of scrap metal, some coral… A lot of those lockers are mostly empty, but there are scratches and dents all over the place that I think came from him throwing more rocks in. So he was a rock collector… who took most of his rocks with him when he left?

I can't eat the rocks he left behind, so I don't really care. It's dark out, again, and I'm sticking to the rooms with no windows until the sun comes up. That holographic error code is definitely an error code; I might not know alien computers, but I know nobody makes a holographic projector that can't display anything except a single message.

The computer that was on the wall is still rebooting. I'm starting to worry about what happened here, that most of the complicated electronics seem to be broken. I'm relying on the working ones for fresh water and air inside this hamster cage. What if they break?

I don't know. I found a thingy in one of the lockers, I think it's a flashlight. No battery. I found a bunch of batteries, but they're all dead. There's a thing on the wall with holes for batteries, and I stuck two of the dead ones in, but I don't know if that's doing anything. I–

Twice in one fucking day! I'm fifteen and healthy but I'm going to have a heart attack if this keeps up.

This place has a PA system. How do I know? Because it just blasted out a big, hearty computer-voice 'System Reboot Successful!' at the top of its fucking electronic lungs. Then, just as I'm realizing what happened, it says 'Files Corrupted. Safety Mode Engaged. Error Code…' and it rattled off another stupid code I have no chance of understanding.

But it's on now, and even computers in safety mode can do some stuff. Does this place have internet? Does this planet have internet? Is there a how-to guide written in a text document on the desktop? Do any of those concepts apply to super-advanced computers owned by assholes who like the abyss staring at them while they sleep?

Will the computer be able to point me to something edible? Because I'm really starting to feel the hunger eating away at my insides. No more speculating for now. I'm going to find out.

Computer functions and status list:

Basic interface is working. I think. It's a holographic touchscreen thingy. I can touch things.

It's asking me to link a datascreen, which I don't have. Like a tablet, maybe? I haven't found one of those.

I can't find a settings menu, so if there's an option to turn off the loud voice I don't know where it is. No idea when it will strike next.

There is a list of connected devices and their status, which I'll put here.

Fabricator: Functional, partial file corruption. Limited access. Top priority, because this is the only thing on the list that sounds like it could maybe make me food.

Scanner Room: Offline, partial file corruption. It's also giving an error code that matches the one in the room with the hologram coming from the floor, so I know what that's supposed to be now.

Vehicle Docking Mechanisms are fully functional.

Seamoth is fully functional and fully charged. I think that's the little submarine.

Battery Charger: No connection. Which, well… Shit? I don't know if that means there's a loose wire (I have yet to see a wire in here) or if it's just so totally corrupted that it doesn't register at all. I hope I don't need batteries for anything.

Modification Station: No connection. Same problem as the battery charger, but I have no idea what this thing does or why I would need it so I'm not so worried about that. Batteries, I understand. Modifications? To what? Which one of these big pieces of machinery even is the modification station? It's probably not important.

Water Filtration Machine: Systems Nominal. Thankfully. I'd be starving and thirsty if that wasn't working.

Bioreactor: Systems Nominal. Good.

Solar panels: No connection. This thing had solar panels at some point? Does it still have them? Where would they be?

Radio: Systems Nominal. Where? Which is it? And who the hell is close enough for me to use a radio to contact? Is there a whole community of sea-base-loving assholes living out here? Second highest priority.

Medical Kit Fabricator: Systems Nominal. I think I found this already… It has the green plus sign on it. It didn't open before, I thought it was locked. Maybe now I can open it. And it's a fabricator… It makes medical kits? That would be really useful if I was looking for drugs and bandages, not food.

Structural Integrity: 48%, which is… I don't know. Is that good for how long this place has gone without maintenance? Bad? Catastrophically bad? I haven't seen any signs of damage… but I've only seen the inside.

I stayed up most of the night fiddling with the computers. I don't regret it. Better than having nightmares, and my stomach is hurting so much that I wouldn't have been able to sleep anyway. I found the Fabricator, it folds out from the wall. I even got it to show me a menu. A really simple one. I can't tell if that's safe mode in action or if the asshole's computer is normally set up like one of those phones with two buttons that they give old people.

That was where I got stuck again, and where I'm still stuck now, writing out what I did in the hopes that going over it will give me new ideas. There was a whole menu of food items, and, well… They're all salted or just cooked fish. And I checked, it just makes this annoying little beeping noise if I try to select one of those.

I'm not an idiot. I figured out what was going on pretty quickly. This fabricator wants salt and a raw fish, and in return it will… salt the fish for me. Or I can just give it a raw fish and it will cook it. Explains the lack of a kitchen, at least.

Obviously I don't have any raw fish so I couldn't do that. I figured I should test that it works before giving it a hypothetical raw fish, anyway. I don't like sushi but I probably could eat it if it was that or starvation, and I would rather have raw fish than disintegrated or charred to carbon fish if the Fabricator is acting up.

There were other things it could make that weren't food… A lot of them just gave me error codes when I selected them, so I think those programs – recipes? – were corrupted. Of the ones that weren't, I made some copper wire. Two hunks of copper from the storage locker was all it wanted, which in turn explains why the asshole was a rock collector. There was a big flashy light show and lasers and it made a spool of copper wire somehow even though I only gave it raw copper. Where did it get the stuff to make the spool the wire is wrapped around? Impurities in the copper? Also, is the reason this room has no windows that the fabricator is so flashy and the asshole didn't want the wildlife wondering what the bright lights were? That would make some sense.

Really, I got a lot of explanations for the asshole's design choices last night. No kitchen? No need for one. Rock collection? Raw materials. Window into the abyss in front of the bed? Clinical insanity.

No, the computer didn't have a medical diagnosis on the previous occupant, but I feel qualified to give one. For all I know I'm the most medically knowledgeable human alive on this planet.

I think writing in this notebook is making me snarky. I used to talk a lot, I remember… I'm kind of doing that now. Talking a lot. There's no Emma to mock me here, no Sophia to kick me, no Madison to taunt me…

And if they were here I'd make them sleep in the asshole's room. So there.

Actually, I think I would be willing to tolerate Sophia being here with me. Because I think I have to go out. Into the water. If she was here she could do it. I'd tolerate all the punches and kicks and shoves in the world if it got her to go out and hunt some fish for the both of us.

Teleporting person or persons who brought me here, whoever you are, wherever you are, whyever you torture me so… If you exist and you can't be bothered to actually help me, please send Sophia as a consolation prize. If you're doing this for shits and giggles that would really make this more fun to watch. Also, people care about her. They might put some effort into finding out where she disappeared to.

No?

No. Thought not.

So I have to go out, and all the stupid humor in the world isn't going to change that. The fabricator can make a wetsuit, flippers, and a small oxygen tank, and there are enough rocks and bits of plastic in the lockers to do it. There's an airlock over to the West of the base, by the edge of the seaweed forest, which lets out onto solid ground instead of hanging over a huge drop like the moonpool. I have a knife, and there are plenty of insignificant alien goldfish around to stab.

I can go out. I need to go out.

I don't want to go out. I don't want to be ripped apart and eaten. But the cramps in my stomach are telling me that I won't be able to go out eventually, maybe sooner than I think. So I have to screw up my courage now and make that swimming gear and put it on and figure it out and then I have to open that airlock, swim out, stab a fish with my knife, and book it back to the airlock.

Even when I summarize it it doesn't sound possible. Not without me fucking up somewhere along the line. But I don't have a choice. I have to do it.

If I survive this and somehow get home, I'm taking my knife with me and I'm not ever going to let anyone push me around again.

Wouldn't that be something. For the five minutes it would take for them to get me arrested for bringing a piddly knife to a school with more weapons than a gang hideout.

If this is my last entry, then you'll find my bones somewhere near this base, probably stuck between the teeth of an alien alligator. Dad, I love you. Everyone else on Earth Bet, go fuck yourselves and doubly fuck you if you're reading this or hearing it narrated over some sob-story documentary. I'm going out there even though I'm scared shitless. If I die then at least I didn't die curled up in a corner because I was too scared to try.

A girl stands in a narrow corridor. She is thin, obviously so with the skintight diving suit that she now wears. Black, with orange rubber flippers and sleek futuristic lines all over. She has an oxygen tank strapped to her back and is leaning forward slightly to compensate for the weight. Two tubes run from the tank around to the front of her facemask, which she has just strapped on.

She stands there for a moment, alone and ready to enter the water. Then she leans over and picks up a simple gray knife from the floor, gripping it tightly in one hand while the other reaches for the circular wheel of the outer airlock door. The inner door is already closed behind her.

She turns the airlock wheel a quarter-rotation, and the lights in the sealed airlock flash twice. Water floods in, rapidly filling up from her feet all the way over her head.

She inhales once. Holds her breath for a moment. Exhales. Her mask and her oxygen tank continue to function as expected.

Then she continues turning the wheel and pulls the door open.

She awkwardly propels herself out into the alien ocean, armed only with a knife and the will to keep moving. To live.

Something small and slimy immediately smacks her in the face. She flails at it, yelling violently into her mask. Little puffs of yellow fluid come out of the thing as she batters it and smacks it into the exterior of the airlock.

The big-eyed fish that swam into her face now floats limply in the water by her hip, leaking more yellow fluid. It takes her a few seconds to fully understand what has happened, and a few more to stare out at the alien ocean arrayed in front of her to check for imminent death approaching.

Several of the large-eyed fish's brethren stare accusingly, but she sees no threats. Just seaweed and a steel platform and a planter bed filled with exotic-looking plant life.

She leans down, grabs the fish by the torso, and slowly, awkwardly pulls herself back into the airlock. Then she does her best to slam the door closed.

I survived.

I'm shaking. Why am I shaking? I survived.

I survived. This fish tastes like chicken. Greasy fried chicken. It's the best thing I've ever eaten and I don't even care that its huge eye is staring at me. I'm going to find out if that eye tastes like mashed potatoes.

Okay, I'm back. It's the morning after… all of that. I think I broke down crying while stuffing my face with fish eyeball, then fell asleep. Not my proudest moment. And waking up to half a cooked fish eye staring at me probably spawned its own series of nightmares that I'll be terrorized with the next time I close my eyes. At least the fish tasted good?

I wish this place had a medical scanner or something. I'm worried that something's wrong with me. I shouldn't be this scared. Even if it's normal, I can't afford to keep feeling like this. Not if I'm going to continue to feed myself.

I'm not hungry again yet, but that one fish wasn't exactly a feast. I'm going to need more, maybe one or two a day, and I don't think they're all going to volunteer to die by swimming into my face the second I go out.

I have to beat this fear. Control it, at the very least. It'll get me killed just as surely as the things I'm actually afraid of. Even if I'm scared shitless, I can't let it stop me from thinking like it did with that fish startling me. I could have totally missed an actual threat swimming up to me while I flailed at its stupid eye.

Wow, not being hungry or thirsty or sleep deprived or wondering where the bathroom is – all at the same time for the first time since I got here – apparently does wonders for the clearness of my thinking. Who would have guessed.

I need to not let my fear control me. I've got precious few options available to me as to how to do that, so… window-gazing. If I watch those alligator-things for long enough I'll know how they behave, right? So if they notice and attack me next time I need to get food I'll have a chance, or at least won't freak out quite so much?

But first, the radio. If I can call for help I need to do it as soon as possible. Should maybe have done this before going out to hunt down a fish, but, well, the hunger gnawing at my insides made that seem more important at the time.

It's been a while. Two days, in fact. Why haven't I written anything? Because I've been busy.

The radio is useless. It's not a radio that can listen to different stations like back home, it's more like a phone with really limited range… but if there's anybody in that range, they're not talking. I recorded a very polite, factual cry for help and sent it into the void, but there's been no response. No incoming messages either, and when I try to access old messages I just get 'no old messages'. Either the asshole was a hermit, or the data corruption I keep hearing about with the other devices hit this one too and ruined any old messages.

The bioreactor is no longer an issue. When I went out – yes, I did! A second time! It has been two days, I would have been starving again by now if I didn't – I got a whole bunch of random weeds and stuff. So long as it doesn't break, it'll be easy to keep going.

But before I went out, I spent all day and a bit of the night watching out one of the wider windows. No notebook, no notes, I was too tempted to just stare down at my notebook instead of actually watching.

The alligators – I'm just going to call them that, their alien status is implied – kind of lost their terrifying luster after a while. They're still deadly and I bet they could rip my limbs off by accident if I got too close, but they seem to spend most of their time playing with bits of scrap metal. Pick a chunk up with their elongated snout, wave it around for a while, then drop it again. Like a dog. They don't stray far from their seaweed forest, not even when they're pursuing one of the faster little fish for their next meal.

Sitting around and watching them like a nature documentary is a good strategy… so long as the subject is endearing enough to make me smile eventually. The sand sharks out in the red sea plain are not that. They're ambush predators, hiding in the red grass and sand and waiting for something to swim close. Then they burst out of the ground, shaking and I think screeching, and maul whatever caught their attention.

Not fun. Not playful. Not going anywhere near their habitat. Red grass might as well be red from all the blood I'd be spilling if I swam too close.

But the best news is that in all of my window-watching, I realized something. I know what's to my North, West, and East. Red grass plain, seaweed forest, and just sandy cliffside, respectively. But what about my South? Up on top of the cliff that goes almost all of the way to the surface of the water?

I climbed the ladder all the way up to the top pod, but instead of getting out I crouched and looked down through one of the lower windows. It was kind of awkward to get the right angle, but it was so worth it.

To the South is pretty much perfect. Bits of bright coral, really shallow, and no alligators or sand sharks in sight. Nothing bigger than my head that I can see, and it's so shallow that I don't think anything much bigger than me would want to live there.

So, the next time I went out, I went up there. Had to figure out how to actually swim to get there, but it's not really that hard. Catching fish isn't hard either, even when they're not swimming right into me. They don't really avoid me.

So I have a safe-ish place to swim and feed myself from, apparently infinite clean water, and a base that is mostly self-sustaining. Everything's pretty good, right?

Well…

It would be. I'm certainly not in any immediate danger now. Lonely, sure, worried as hell about getting home, but not in danger so long as I avoid getting close to the seaweed forest or the red plains and stay within sight of the big metal pole sticking up to the surface.

Sounds good, right? It would be.

If I hadn't seen the outside of the base on my way back from swimming in the safe shallows.

And all of the huge dents and scrape marks marring the exterior.

Something big was here. Something bigger than anything I've seen so far. And it was not friendly. I think it attacked the base, then was driven off or got bored. This is why the computer said the structural integrity was at 48%. This might be why some of the computers are messed up.

It might be why there's nobody here but me.

I haven't seen any big dead fish around here, so it's still alive. Still out there somewhere. Entirely capable of coming back and finishing the job at any time.

Even if I stay in the base and never go anywhere, I'm not safe. Not entirely.

I need to go home. I want to, obviously, but I don't think I could live here forever even if I didn't. Not when I haven't found any weapons besides a knife. That blurry void out beyond the red grass plains… It must have come from there.

I don't know what's out there, but I now know there's definitely something.

No amount of real-life nature documentary is going to make that okay.

I think there's something actually wrong with me.

Not in the 'I'm crazy or paranoid or a huge coward' sense. I mean physically. There's this tightness in my chest that isn't going away. I can feel it, a little ball of tension that's right in the center of my ribcage. It's slowly getting bigger.

I'm still trying to figure out how to work the actual computer here in the base, it keeps telling me to get a tablet and doesn't have a lot of obvious things like instruction manuals or documentation or troubleshooting, but I think it can make something to scan me. The device doesn't have a description in the Fabricator – nothing does for whatever reason, there are only icons and names – but it's called a Scanner and there was an empty icon labeled 'scanner data' in the computer that tells me it's corrupted, so… It's my best lead. My only lead. I've looked through everything else the Fabricator can make that isn't corrupted, and it's… not a very useful list.

The first section is what I think are just intermediate materials. Glass, bleach, oil, hydrochloric acid, titanium bars, rubber sheets. Nothing particularly useful on its own (I could block all the windows with enough rubber sheets but that might just make me more paranoid), and that was basically all it could make.

The second section was electronics, and of that only two things weren't corrupted. Copper wires and batteries. Not helpful at all.

The third section is food. Nothing corrupted here, for all the good that does me.

The fourth section is I think personal equipment? No corruption here either, which is good, but most of the things I might want need raw materials I just don't have. Where the hell am I supposed to get that much raw silver? Or fucking diamonds with a minimum required size that I think is bigger than my fist? And how does that translate to an armored dive suit and helmet?

I'm not sure, but I think those recipes are corrupted too, just not in a way the computer recognizes as wrong. Or the asshole was a billionaire who could actually supply that sort of thing for his fancy Fabricator.

… I really hope this whole base wasn't some rich dude's holiday home, but an unhealthy fascination with deadly aquatic wildlife and the means to chase that stupid hobby to extremes is certainly a reason to be on this planet.

Then there's the fifth section of the menu. Tools. The holy grail. Don't know what the five grayed-out icons were supposed to be. Probably weapons, because those are conspicuously missing from the options available to me. What I wouldn't give for a speargun…

In the meantime, the Scanner is here in the list, along with something called a Repair Tool which I really want for peace of mind. A flashlight, which I want just in case. Underwater flares which might actually be amazing if I can burn or blind aggressive fish with them. Something called a Propulsion Cannon that looks like a tripod-thing and might be some kind of turret to defend the base with.

Thing is, all of those cool tools that might be life-changing down here? They need stuff I don't have. Specifically, all of them but the scanner need pure sulfur. The scanner only needs batteries (presumably charged ones? Does the Fabricator make them charged off the bat? I think if they're chemical batteries they should be charged to start with.) which need mushrooms, but I think I've seen some of the kind of mushroom the Fabricator wants in the safe shallows. I'll be back to writing once I've got this thing made.

It has been ten days since I first came to this planet. Only ten days. Ten whole days.

Fuck, dad must be worried out of his mind. I just… vanished… in the middle of a school day. And literally no one would know anything about where I vanished to. Can't even blame my bullies for it; they legitimately don't know anything about where I am. I assume.

I got the Scanner built. Even figured out how to use it. Pretty holographic lights to scan things, then a little pop-up sound from the Scanner.

Then it throws up an error in its own little computer voice. 'Connect to Tablet' it says. Ms. Knott's computer class was more about using what we had, not understanding how it worked, but I picked up some basic stuff. It's gotten me this far, but I think I'm finally hitting the wall that's been here all along. This 'tablet' all the computers keep telling me I need is an essential part of the system that I just don't have. Like a desktop without a monitor, basically. I'm operating blind on the console and I don't know enough to work it properly. I don't have a tablet. The Scanner probably has the scans I've done stored in it, but it isn't connected to the main computer and I don't have and can't make an alien USB cable. So it's useless.

The tight ball in my chest keeps getting bigger… It doesn't hurt, not really, it's just a pressure I can't ignore.

I'm going to bed. No, not the bed, I'm still not using that. I've still got this creeping sense of dread whenever I look out into the ocean, no matter how much time I spend looking. It's still terrifying and utterly hostile territory that hosts unknown dangers. I might be able to swim in my safe areas without (much) fear, but that doesn't mean I'm fearless and it doesn't extend to the unknown.

My bed is up in the bioreactor room. I brought in a bunch of seaweed and let it dry, then pulled the blanket off the real bed and spread it over the seaweed like the sheet over a crinkly mattress. It's a bit like sleeping on top of a pile of dead leaves, but it's okay. Better than sleeping on the hard floor, and the room temperature in here is basically perfect. I haven't found the AC unit yet, so that was pretty lucky in the first place.

I don't know what to do next. I've hit the limit of what I can figure out, electronically and in the real world. I can feed myself, all my basic physical needs are met, but I have no clue how to get home and I'm still basically living on borrowed time until something breaks that I won't be able to fix.

Also, I'm bored. Shocking, I know. But no monitor for the computer, remember? Even if this place has alien TV shows loaded up on the computer, or alien books, or alien video games, I can't find them and probably couldn't play them if I did, not without the all-important tablet. And survival stuff only takes up so much time out of the almost certainly shorter day here.

Bored and worried. I might not wake up tomorrow if this chest thing is a serious medical condition. Dying in my sleep… It wouldn't be the worst death this world could offer me, but I don't want to die. Especially not now that I'm actually surviving. I could hang on here for a while if it weren't for this feeling.

I've been thinking about how I got here. No, the pressure in my chest hasn't gone away, it's still there and still growing, but I can't do anything about it so I've been thinking about other things. It's not hindering my movement or anything, it's pretty benign as far as side-effects go, but… yeah. Don't want to think about it.

I was in the bathroom at Winslow, yes, but the details, the context. It was a Thursday. During the lunch period. Cold and rainy outside. Glue was in my hair because Madison felt like amusing herself in World Issues.

I wonder if Mr. Gladly will excuse my missed classes if he finds out I was on another world instead of attending his class and therefore that his world's issues weren't relevant to my life?

I digress. Glue in my hair. I got most of it out, but that just meant I was mad, not devastated. Mad and helpless. I might even have blacked out for a second, which maybe was an early sign of this chest problem? Blacking out from pure anger can't be a normal thing. Then…

Then I was falling, but I think I remember more than just that.

First there was a snapping sound, loud and wet. Think of snapping celery but much bigger. Then I was falling, right there, straight down. Into the floor… I think the hole was glowing around the edges? I wasn't falling into the classroom on the floor below me, at least.

I didn't hear or see it close behind me, but it was light in the bathroom and dark here on this planet, and it was dark when I broke the surface of the water a few seconds after I fell in, so I think the portal closed almost immediately. And I'm almost certain it wasn't very big around, because I was the only one to fall in. The whole school didn't come with me or anything, and I remember a roll of toilet paper on the floor a few feet away from the sinks that didn't come either.

It feels like I was targeted specifically. I was the only one in the bathroom and the hole was small, the odds of it being random are ridiculously low. But who cares about me enough to banish me to an alien world? I can only think of three people, and this just isn't something they would do even if they could.

It's so frustrating! I can't figure out why this happened to me and I can't do anything else either!

A spindly young woman sits on the floor, cross-legged, and stares out past a glass window into the ocean. She's still wearing a diving suit, just without the mask, oxygen tank or fins, and her glasses are perched crookedly on her nose. She's fiddling with a device reminiscent of a labelmaker with a futuristic casing and elongated tip, holding it in one hand and pointing it at the other. Her notebook sits closed next to her, a pen laid across the cover.

The scanner emits a little webbed network of lights that trace over her hand, and she watches intently as the lights pass over her skin.

'No tablet found', the device intones once the scan is complete.

She scowls, her intrigued expression morphing into one of pure frustration, and smacks the scanner against the floor, doing absolutely no harm to either the scanner or the floor.

Then she brings her free hand to her chest, and her scowl intensifies. She starts to get up, uncrossing her legs–

Something occurs to her, a moment of unknown epiphany. Her eyes widen.

A hole opens under her with a wet cracking sound and she falls through, the Scanner and notebook tumbling in after her before it cracks shut again.

Author's Note: The main problem I had (and still somewhat have) with this story is that I'm narratively trying to do something that just… isn't very intuitive. Specifically, the difference in narrative voice between 'Taylor writing in a diary' and 'Taylor in real life'. Most of this story is told through the former, and it just… doesn't sound like her. That's intentional. This is her thought-out, overly verbose coping mechanism. Words into the void to kill the time and ideally dull the terror. Something she doesn't mean for anyone to read, but also something she's putting effort into making comprehensive and readable just in case. It doesn't sound like her inner monologue because it's not, even if it's formatted that way.

So it's intentional that the narrative comes across as OOC for Taylor at times, and if you look at the present-tense interludes you can see that her behavior in the moment is actually at odds with how she depicts herself after the fact. But I'm not sure if that's working from the reader's perspective. Not sure enough that I wrote this, tweaked it, went on to the next few parts and just… stopped. Left it to sit.

Now, though, having gone back through it? I like the concept, I like where it'll be going, and if the thing I'm trying to do has failed, well, there are greater sins in fanfiction than having a Taylor who is perceived as out of character, so… eh. I'll continue to attempt to justify her narrative voice and depict the contrast between her writing and her actions as perceived from the outside, but I'm not stressing over it.

Anyway, next time in part 2: She survived being stranded on an alien world and all she got was a lousy diving suit! Oh, and the alien plague. Can't forget that. (For the record, this story will have at least three parts, possibly four. I've not finished parts 2 or 3 yet so I can't say for sure.)